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The present existence of the Ideal-Forms has been demonstrated
elsewhere: we take up our argument from that point.
If, then, there is more than one of such forming Ideas, there
must of necessity be some character common to all and equally
some peculiar character in each keeping them distinct.
This peculiar characteristic, this distinguishing difference, is
the individual shape. But if shape, then there is the shaped,
that in which the difference is lodged.
There is, therefore, a Matter accepting the shape, a permanent
substratum.
Further, admitting that there is an Intelligible Realm beyond, of
which this world is an image, then, since this world-compound is
based on Matter, there must be Matter there also.
And how can you predicate an ordered system without thinking of
form, and how think of form apart from the notion of something in
which the form is lodged?
No doubt that Realm is, in the strict fact, utterly without
parts, but in some sense there is part there too. And in so far
as these parts are really separate from each other, any such
division and difference can be no other than a condition of
Matter, of a something divided and differentiated: in so far as
that realm, though without parts, yet consists of a variety of
entities, these diverse entities, residing in a unity of which
they are variations, reside in a Matter; for this unity, since it
is also a diversity, must be conceived of as varied and
multiform; it must have been shapeless before it took the form in
which variation occurs. For if we abstract from the
Intellectual-Principle the variety and the particular shapes, the
Reason-Principles and the Thoughts, what precedes these was
something shapeless and undetermined, nothing of what is actually
present there.
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